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The background film, about one minute, without narration: Dawn: the stone ring and its tower on a wooded hill, mirrored in a still lake beyond wildflowers. The approach: a country road through farm fields toward the low ring. The gates: stone piers and open iron gates, an orchard walk beside a canal. From above: the ring around its garden court, with moats, greenhouses and a lake. The garden court inside the ring, planted and in use. The glass gallery along the wall, with families looking out over the lake. The tropical atrium against the stone halls. A greenhouse in snow, glowing and full of tomatoes. The warm moat steaming beside the wall, a path kept clear of snow. Skaters on the frozen lake at sunrise. Night under the Milky Way, a few warm lights on the water. Natural sound: birds, wind, water and footsteps. No narration.

A concept for American digital infrastructure  ·  Designed in Indiana

Not a data center. A data conservatory.

The Limestone Data Conservatory is digital infrastructure designed to take nothing from its neighbors: its own power, no new power lines, no public water for cooling and no land taken by eminent domain. It never has to wait in line for the grid, the bottleneck now holding back new computing across America. Its waste heat is meant to grow food all year.

Built for what follows.

An oil painting of a limestone campus with a tall tower on a green hill above a still lake at dawn, wildflowers in the foreground. The stone ring and its tower on a wooded hill at dawn, reflected in a still lake, with daisies in the foreground.
Where the idea began: an original oil painting of the concept by Georgia Janisse, the designer’s mother.

Start with what matters to you.

At a glance.

Status
A design concept. No site is under contract and no binding vendor agreement is in place. All figures are planning-level estimates.
What it does
It does the work of a data center, housing the computers that run AI and other computing, inside a single ring of Indiana limestone designed to take nothing from its neighbors.
Size
A ring about 600 feet across on roughly seven acres: eight hall segments around a garden court, half in the earth and half in daylight.
Phase One
Two of eight segments; about 40 MW of machine load and about 30 MW of recoverable heat.
Power
Made on site. Phase One: natural gas with storage. Phase Two: an advanced small reactor, once a design is selected and licensed. A standby utility tie for construction and backup only.
Water
A sealed cooling loop with dry heat rejection; no public water for cooling.
Money
Designed to ask for no public money and no tax abatements; the project intends to pay full property taxes on every acre it owns.
Who
Sarah Janisse Brown, designer; Charles Yi, developer; Zach Duke, convener. Sponsored by Kodesh Partners, LLC. Contact the founders.

The concept

The objections became the design brief.

America needs far more computing, and the places asked to host it have learned to say no. Queues for grid power run for years. New transmission lines cross family farms. Cooling water competes with towns and farms. Both sides of that fight are right about something.

The Conservatory was designed in the room where data centers are opposed. Sarah Janisse Brown sat through county open houses beside families who had been told a high-voltage line would cross their land, and she noticed that every complaint traced back to a design choice. Most campuses rely on the grid because buying power is simpler than making it, need new lines because the grid has to reach them, and release their heat because nothing nearby is built to use it.

So she reversed each choice. The result is designed to give builders the capacity they need while removing the objections neighbors raise most.

Two drawings side by side. Left, what we have been building: a gray windowless box beside high-voltage towers. Right, what we could build: a ring of stone with a tower, surrounded by water and green land.
What we’ve been building, and what we could build. Artist’s concept plate.

What the ordinary price tag leaves out

An ordinary campus imports what it does not own.

The queue

Years of waiting for grid capacity before the first megawatt is served.

The corridor

Miles of new high-voltage towers on permanent easements, which can be taken by condemnation when families refuse.

The water

Large volumes of water drawn from wells, rivers or town systems, among the most common triggers of organized opposition.

The rates

A load that large becomes a rate case, and a rate case becomes a story about the neighbors’ bills.

The heat

Nearly all of the site’s heat, released into the air instead of put to use.

The end

A building fitted to one generation of machines, which may need rebuilding for the next.

The design

Five decisions. Each one removes a reason to say no.

The machines live inside a single ring of limestone: eight hall segments around a garden court, half bedded in the earth and half standing in daylight, with a tower above the vault. Around it, the land goes back to work as farm and food forest, with room to open as parkland in a later phase where a site allows.

  1. 01Power
  2. 02Water
  3. 03Heat
  4. 04Land
  5. 05Stone
An aerial view of a circular limestone building around a planted garden court, with a tall stone tower at its center, a moat, greenhouses and a lake beyond. An aerial view of the circular stone building around a planted garden court, with the tower, moats, greenhouses and a lake beyond.
The ring from the air: about 600 feet across on roughly seven acres. Artist’s concept plate.

01 · Power

Generated on site, behind the meter.

What is designed

Power in two phases, made on the property. Phase One is natural-gas generation with storage, designed to run the Conservatory without drawing on the grid. Phase Two would place an advanced small reactor of about 50 megawatts of electricity (MWe) in a vault built during Phase One, once a design is selected and licensed. A standby utility connection carries construction power and emergency backup only, not the day-to-day operating load.

What it removes

The interconnection queue for operating power, new transmission corridors and the condemnation that comes with them, and any operating load on the grid that serves the neighbors’ homes.

A cutaway drawing of the stone tower and the vault beneath it, where an advanced small reactor is planned for Phase Two.
Phase Two, up close: the vault planned for an advanced small reactor of about 50 MWe. Concept section; no reactor has been selected or licensed, and the standby utility tie for construction and backup is not drawn.

02 · Water

One sealed loop. No public water for cooling.

What is designed

Direct liquid cooling on a sealed circuit. Heat crosses to the landscape only through metal-plate heat exchangers, so the two waters never mix. Dry heat rejection and, where the site’s rainfall and catchment allow, a rain-fed lake held as thermal and drought reserve. The lake and moat are open water: they evaporate, overflow in wet years and steam on cold mornings, while the loop itself withdraws nothing. Water for drinking and sanitation comes from a separate, conventional supply.

What it removes

Cooling water drawn from wells, rivers or town systems, cooling-tower plumes, and competition with farms and homes for water in a drought.

A circular diagram titled “One sealed loop: the same water, around and around, forever,” linking a rain-fed lake, the ring halls, a tropical atrium, garden beds, a heated path, a fish moat and a cooling moat.
One sealed loop: for cooling, the water bill is paid by the sky. Concept diagram; heat is rejected through closed dry coolers, not evaporative cooling towers.

03 · Heat

The heat is meant to grow food.

What is designed

Warm water from the halls cascades from its highest use to its lowest: a tropical atrium, winter greenhouses, an aquaponic fishery in the moat and a walk kept clear of snow, before it returns, cooled, to the loop.

What it removes

Cooling-tower plumes, and much of the heat an ordinary campus throws away. The warmth is meant to grow food through an Indiana winter.

A diagram of warmth flowing step by step from the ring halls to a tropical atrium, greenhouses, a fish moat and a heated bike path, then back to the loop as cooled water.
From highest use to lowest, warmth does good work all the way around the loop. Artist’s concept plate.

04 · Land

One ring, not a sprawl.

What is designed

The ring is about 600 feet across on roughly seven acres. It is designed to be built once and filled over time: Phase One puts machines in two of its eight segments, and the rest would hold workshops, greenhouse bays and classrooms until needed. The acreage around the ring stays green: farm, food forest and prairie, with grounds that could open as a public park in a later phase.

What it removes

Farmland given over to a spread of separate buildings. With no new transmission corridor, there is no corridor to condemn; how natural gas reaches the site without easements is an open question below.

A ground plan of the ring: eight data hall segments around a planted garden court with the tower at the center, warm and cold moats circling outside.
The ground plan: machines in the outer band, people in the garden court and atrium. Diagrammatic plan.

05 · Stone

Built to outlast the machines inside it.

What is designed

Indiana limestone, from the quarries that built Indiana University, set by Indiana trades. Plain, generous stone rooms, sized to take generation after generation of hardware without being rebuilt, with the carving saved for the gates, passages and tower.

What it removes

The short life of a building designed around one generation of machines. The technology turns over; the building does not.

A section through the ring wall: data halls half below ground and half in daylight behind a thick stone wall, opening through tall windows into a glass garden atrium.
The ring halls: half in the earth, half in the light. Concept section.

Phase One, at planning level

Two segments first. Six to grow into.

Phase One fills two of the ring’s eight segments. Later phases add halls and generation only as demand and permits allow.

28of 8
Hall segments filled with machines in Phase One.
~40MW
Machine load in about 50,000 square feet of first halls.
~30MW
Low-grade heat recoverable for buildings, greenhouses and walks.

Design commitments

0
Cooling water drawn from public sources
0
Acres taken by eminent domain
0
Tax abatements asked

Planning-level estimates, to be confirmed in a feasibility phase. Zero figures are design commitments, not measured results. Phase One generation is natural gas with storage; Phase Two adds an advanced small reactor once selected and licensed.

Talk to the founders about capacity

Who it serves

Designed so every side of the hearing can say yes.

Data center fights usually end with someone losing. Here is what each side asks for, and how the design answers.

If you need more computing

Capacity designed not to wait in a utility’s queue or depend on a contested transmission line, with direct liquid cooling and halls sized for generation after generation of hardware.

If you have fought data centers

No cooling water from your supply, no operating load on your grid, no land taken by eminent domain and, where a site can open to the public in a later phase, a park instead of a fence.

If you own land

No eminent domain and no new transmission towers across your farm.

If you care about water and the land

No cooling water drawn from rivers or aquifers, waste heat put to work and the land around the ring kept as farm, prairie and forest. Phase One runs on natural gas; its emissions are an open question, printed below.

If you pay the bills

No tax abatements, no public money and no operating load on the grid behind your electric rates.

If you care about America’s lead

American computing on American ground, designed not to wait on the grid or a contested line.

For neighbors

A neighbor designed to give back.

The Conservatory is designed to be the place a county photographs for the front of its visitor guide.

What it is designed never to do

  • Draw cooling water from your well, river or town system.
  • Draw its operating power from the grid that serves your home.
  • Take anyone’s land by eminent domain.
  • Raise cooling-tower plumes.
  • Ask the county for a tax abatement.

What it is designed to give back

  • Greenhouses growing food straight through winter, on heat an ordinary campus throws away.
  • A walk kept clear of snow by recovered heat, and lighting designed for dark skies.
  • Grounds designed to open to the public in a later phase, where a site allows: a lake and trails, orchards, a farm market, and an education campus where schools, universities and farm youth programs learn beside a working farm.
  • The machines and the power stay behind their own secure wall, whatever opens around them.

Still to prove for neighbors: the Phase One gas plant’s emissions and noise, and how gas reaches the site without easements. Both are set out under open questions.

Ask the founders a neighbor’s question

Stone gate piers with open iron gates, a curving path through blossoming orchards leading up a green hill to the ring and tower. Stone gate piers with open iron gates; a path beside a canal runs through flowering orchards up to the ring and tower.
The gates and the orchard walk, in the full concept. Artist’s concept plate.

From a letter by Autumn Sojka

This plan offers solutions for the strongest concerns we have in Morgan County.”

Autumn Sojka, founder of Save Morgan County, the group organized against a proposed transmission line and data center campus, writing about the original concept.

From a letter written in September 2026 about the original concept. It is not an endorsement of any site, plan or investment.

The ring and tower at sunrise in winter, warm mist rising from the moat, people skating on a frozen lake in the foreground. Skaters on a frozen lake at sunrise, the ring and tower beyond with warm mist rising.
The full concept in winter: where a site opens to the public, the season gets cozier, not quieter. Artist’s concept plate.

The grounds

Walk the grounds.

From the gates to the night sky: the full concept, in photoreal renderings made from Sarah Janisse Brown’s drawings, the same views as the film.

  1. The stone ring and its tower on a wooded hill at dawn, reflected in a still lake, with daisies in the foreground.
    Dawn over the lake.
  2. A country road through farm fields leading toward the low stone ring and its tower, with a red barn and morning mist.
    The approach, past working farmland.
  3. Stone gate piers with open iron gates; a path beside a canal runs through flowering orchards up to the ring and tower.
    The open gates and the orchard walk.
  4. An aerial view of the circular stone building around a planted garden court, with the tower, moats, greenhouses and a lake beyond.
    From above: the ring, the garden court and the greenhouses.
  5. Inside the ring: a planted garden court with paths and young trees, the curved stone and glass wall around it and the tower rising at the center.
    The garden court inside the ring: people at the center, machines in the outer band.
  6. A tall glass atrium full of palms and climbing plants against the stone wall of the halls, with people walking through.
    The tropical atrium, warmed by the halls.
  7. A long stone-based greenhouse in the snow, its glass glowing, tomatoes growing inside, the tower behind.
    A greenhouse in winter, warmed by heat from the halls.
  8. A curving stone-edged moat beside the ring wall in winter, water open and steaming, with a cleared path and lampposts.
    The warm moat and a walk kept clear of snow.
  9. Skaters on a frozen lake at sunrise, the ring and tower beyond with warm mist rising.
    Winter on the lake.
  10. The ring and tower on a dark hill under the Milky Way, a few warm lights reflected in the lake.
    Night, with the lights kept low.
Watch the one-minute film, with sound

Renderings of the full concept as designed, not photographs of a built project. Public access to the grounds would come in a later phase, where a site allows.

Three panels: a pollinator prairie, greenhouses full of tomatoes in the snow, and a food forest in autumn, all warmed by recovered heat.
What was wasted now grows: food for people and habitat for wildlife, where the site allows. Artist’s concept plate.

Where it stands

What is designed, and what remains to prove.

The Conservatory is at concept stage: a design with planning-level figures and artist’s concept plates. No site is under contract and no binding vendor agreement is in place. These questions decide whether it proceeds, and they are printed here on purpose.

  1. The power pathway

    The Phase One plant and fuel supply, selection and licensing of a Phase Two reactor, who owns and operates generation behind the meter, the delivery schedule, and funded plans for spent fuel and eventual decommissioning.

  2. Fuel and the gas plant

    How natural gas reaches the site without easements or eminent domain, and the Phase One generators’ emissions, noise and cooling water.

  3. Public money and the grid tie

    Confirming that “no public money” holds through any reactor cost-share, and that the project pays the full cost of its standby utility service.

  4. Site and hydrology

    A parcel where stone, catchment and a site-specific water balance all work on their own merits, including whether rain alone can fill the lake and loop, confirmed by a feasibility study.

  5. The heat and farm model

    Sizing heat recovery against greenhouse and aquaculture demand, and an operator that runs the farm as a business rather than an amenity.

  6. Capital and covenants

    Who owns the plant, the ring and the land, and how the public commitments are made binding on every future owner.

  7. Tenants and timing

    Who leases the first halls, on what terms, and when Phase One could be built.

A proposal that hides its open items cannot be underwritten. Every figure here is an invitation to sharpen it.

For state and county leaders

A category to invite, not defend.

Most data center fights are about what the project takes from the public. The Conservatory is designed to take nothing, which gives a state or county something rare: a siting standard it can champion.

Asks for nothing public

No public water for cooling, no grid capacity for operations, no eminent domain, no public money and no tax abatements. The project intends to pay full property taxes on every acre it owns, from the first day.

Builds local

Indiana limestone, Indiana quarries and Indiana trades and, where the site allows, an education campus that trains people to run the next century’s infrastructure.

Adds capacity, not load

Its operating power is its own, so it brings computing to the state without adding operating load to the grid residents and employers rely on. A standby utility tie carries construction power and backup only.

Commitments in writing

The public commitments are intended to be written into the project company’s documents; how to make them binding on every future owner is one of the open questions.

A template, not an exception

A standard the state could adopt and invite by name, for campuses that draw no public water for cooling and no grid capacity for operations.

The land, kept working

Beyond the ring, the land stays farm, food forest and prairie, designed so that, where a site allows, the grounds can open to the public in a later phase.

Request a briefing for officials

From a letter by Micah Beckwith

Hoosiers aren’t against the future. They want a future that respects them.”

“Economic development and stewardship do not have to be enemies.”

Micah Beckwith, Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, from his letter of September 2026 for the concept book.

Both letters were written in September 2026 about the original concept. Neither endorses any site, plan or investment.

For tenants

Powered halls that do not wait on the grid.

The Conservatory is planned as a wholesale campus: the project company is to build the ring and supply its power, and technology companies lease powered halls inside it.

What is leased

Plain stone halls with power, liquid-cooling water and fiber brought to the rack rows. Tenants bring their own machines; rack density is set when a lease is signed, not in advance.

Power

Generated on site, behind the meter, so a lease does not wait in a utility’s interconnection queue. A standby tie covers construction and backup.

Water and heat

Direct liquid cooling on a sealed loop, no cooling water drawn from public sources, and waste heat put to work. Tenants who report water use and heat reuse would report against a design that draws no public cooling water and puts its heat to work; measured figures come with operation.

What Phase One offers

About 40 MW of machine load in about 50,000 square feet of first halls, in two of the ring’s eight segments. Later halls follow demand.

Behind its own wall

The halls and the power sit behind their own secure wall, apart from any grounds that open to the public.

Still to prove

The site, fiber, the Phase One plant and its schedule, and lease terms, all among the open questions.

Talk to the founders about capacity

For investors and institutions

From concept to a project ready to build.

Accredited investors may be offered a passive interest in a fund. The fund holds an interest in the project company, which is to own and develop the Conservatory. The company’s first work is securing a site, permits, engineering, power and the agreements that make it ready to build. Terms, structure and timing appear only in the offering documents.

Inputs under its own control

Power generated and water managed on the property, designed to reduce exposure to interconnection calendars, utility rate cases and drought curtailment. In exchange it takes on fuel-supply and generation risk, set out under open questions.

Built for the hearing room

Where hearings and litigation set schedules, local acceptance matters. The design answers the objections raised most often; whether it earns support will be tested site by site.

Phased by design

The ring is built once and filled over time. Phase One fills two of eight segments; later phases add halls and generation only as demand and permits allow.

A building that outlives its hardware

Plain stone halls sized to accept generation after generation of equipment. Machines are replaced on their own cycle; the building is designed to remain.

Public commitments, in writing

The public commitments are intended to be written into the project company’s documents and made binding on future owners; how is one of the open questions.

Ready for what comes next

The halls are designed to host new classes of computing as they mature, including quantum systems. The case for the Conservatory does not depend on them.

Request the offering documents

Offering documents are available only to accredited investors. By requesting them, you represent that you are an accredited investor as defined in Rule 501(a) of Regulation D. Each investor’s status is verified before any investment is accepted. Requests go to [email protected].

Who would build it

The designer, the developer and the convener.

  • Portrait of Sarah Janisse Brown.

    Sarah Janisse Brown

    Founder and Chairwoman

    Sarah designed the Conservatory and owns the concept. She grew up on Florida’s Space Coast, homeschooled by her mother, the oil painter whose painting of the concept appears on this page, and by her father, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who worked on the space shuttle’s surfaces as a NASA technician.

    She designed a hydroponic farm at thirteen, planted a food forest at fifteen, built a stone cottage with her own hands by thirty, and founded a publishing company that has put more than 360 titles into homes across the country, which taught her to explain hard things plainly. She has spent 2026 listening to Hoosiers about data centers at county meetings across the state. The Conservatory is her answer.

  • Portrait of Charles Yi.

    Charles Yi

    Chief Executive Officer

    Charles built his career taking large, mixed-use projects from site control through construction for government, civilian and military clients around the world: data centers, resorts and the infrastructure under them, in regulated settings where the permit is as hard as the pour. As chief executive of EXP Development he has led acquisitions and development across continents.

    He reviewed the Conservatory as a developer before joining it and judged that the stone, the supply chain and the below-grade power concept are buildable, subject to a feasibility study. He calls bringing the first one into the world the work of the next thirty years.

  • Portrait of Zach Duke.

    Zach Duke

    President

    Zach was raised in Bargersville, Indiana, in the family of Duke Homes, Johnson County builders since 1986, so he knows what a building costs to do right. For eight years he led strategic growth for organizations up to multi-billion-dollar scale: capital campaigns, nationwide marketing and long-range planning.

    An international speaker and leadership coach for two decades, he has done humanitarian work in more than forty countries, and he and his wife run a classical school. He is the Conservatory’s convener, the one who gets the right people to the table and keeps them there. A husband and father of five, he brings the capital relationships and the patience a fifty-year project requires.

Portrait of Dr. David W. Hearnsberger.

Consulting engineer

Dr. David W. Hearnsberger

David is a veteran of the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine program, where he was responsible for reactor safety. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University and brings more than 35 years of experience, including Department of Energy nuclear work and small modular reactor programs seeking Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval. His work centers on heat transfer in reactors and data centers, and he co-founded Nanexa LLC.

He reviewed the Conservatory as an independent engineer before joining the project as a consultant, and called it “a conceptually terrific place to start.”

Two futures fifty years on. Left: rusting gray boxes and transmission towers behind a no-trespassing fence. Right: the stone campus amid gardens, with a Saturday market.
Two futures, fifty years on. Artist’s concept plate.

The legacy

The computing is for us. The stone is for them.

Fifty years from now, the machines installed today will be long retired. Down one road, what remains is a building past its use and towers standing over somebody’s soybeans. Down the other, the computers inside the stone have been replaced several times, as planned, while the building stays in use: an orchard on its fourth generation of apples, a market that still opens on Saturday mornings and, where the site allows, a lake where children learn to swim.

Built for what follows.

The ring and tower on a dark hill under the Milky Way, its lights reflected in a lake. The ring and tower on a dark hill under the Milky Way, a few warm lights reflected in the lake.
The Conservatory at night. Artist’s concept plate.

Contact

Write to the founders.

For officials, neighbors, partners, the press and investors. Choose a topic below to start your message, or write directly.

[email protected]